Ottawa has been pretty fun so far, I played 3 days of WCOOP this week and unless my 12k stack in the main event turns into something, it was pretty disappointment filled.

The first day(300 PLO rebuy) I just had a ton of mincashes in smaller tournaments, but ended up not really making any deep runs and having just a pretty standard boring/losing tournament session.

The next 2 sessions have been kind of the opposite and I basically got chips in everything.


Thursday I played 22 tournaments with 6 cashes for a small profit, but I had stacks in everything. At one point with a few tables left in each tournament, I was still in the FTP 50 cubed, Stars 109r, FTP 163, Paradise 50 euro rebuy, Stars 109 cubed turbo and among the chipleaders in the 500 rebuy.

I ended up turning those stacks in everything into like an 8th, 5th, and 30th or so in the non 109r's and like 12th and 20th in the 109r's and in the 530 rebuy I lost 2 pots which if I had have won them would have been a sizable chipleader, AQ to KJ on KQQx board and QQ to AQ allin preflop, so that was pretty soul-crushing.

Today I played a much lighter schedule than usual since the WCOOP main event is one of the few tournaments of the year where I really want to be able to focus a fair bit and Molly's friends were going out tonight for her birthday and didn't really want to miss that because I was coming 12th in a 75 freezeout.

Anyways, I got chips in pretty much everything and despite winning a tournament today its been pretty lame. I won the 109 freezeout on Party for 5.5k so I kinda considered that a satellite to the WCOOP main and I managed to get 11th in the Betfair major, 21st in the 1851 player 109 freezeout on Stars and 14th in the Party major after being 3rd/17. I had a bunch of chips in other tournaments as well, but decided to waste the rungood in the 109 freeze. Maybe I'll just turn things around and win the WCOOP main, after that I promise minimal ranting in my blog for quite some time.

Another short update, will make a more thorough update of the trip once I get home but my flight leaves in a few hours. Yesterday I didn't really get too much started, I won some pots early in the day and for the first couple hours was hovering silghtly below average. I got moved to the TV table with about 800k when average was 900k, and within 6 hands I 3bet AKo on the button, got called, cbet the J52r flop and got jammed on by an old guy, folded, raised QJo on the CO with like 25BB, folded to a button 3bet, raised KQo UTG+1, got 3bet by UTG+2 22.5BB deep, folded, raised AQo UTG 20BB deep, got 3bet by the SB who was nitty and folded. That was a fun way to give away over 1/2 my chips.

After that I just kind of picked my spots to steal/resteal and was relatively card dead, and kind of stayed around 400-550k chips for several hours while several eliminations lead to us being down to 11. I called a 4BB shove with Q6, lost to J9, had like 15BB and eventually had one of my shoves called when I had KQo and Carter Phillips(bodybuildiningpokerplayer) had 66 and held to bust me in 11th. I wasn't too upset to bust since all day things hadn't been going spectacularly and winning just didn't seem as in my grasp as it did in say Dortmund this year when I was crushed after losing.

Since the last update I haven't played online at all, but my new 2 part video series is up. I haven't rewatched them since making them several weeks(maybe longer?) ago but will probably do that soon. I ended up going on a roadtrip with my girlfriend where we went to Turning Stone for 2 days, visited Stevejpa in Kingston for an afternoon, went to her parents cottage for a few days and then went to Barrie to do this "tree top trekking" thing with my family as an early Birthday present(last 2 years I've been out of the country for my birthday and we've celebrated after so we decided to beforehand just to mix it up.

The drive to Turning Stone was pretty fun since the highways seemed way less jammed and traffic moved way faster than on the major Canadian highways. The casino/hotel itself was nicer than I expected yet there was far less to do there than expected. We had a draft where there were 4 teams of 6, and I was elected to be a captain. At an EPT or something I think I'd fare pretty well since I seem to know pretty much everyone there, but here I had only met maybe 3/20 of the other players and although I recognized most peoples online names when they said them, I forgot names pretty easily and after drafting nutsinho first round I more or less let him decided who we pick since he had already been there for most of the week. Our team seemed pretty solid, but as of the time I busted(like 90th/200) nutsinho was the only one left. Eventually he busted, and jordankickz who was on charder's team took the tournament down(I think he was the only 1 out of 24 of us who cashed, maybe 1 other mincash or something).

I can't imagine spending the whole like 10 days there, and Molly couldn't imagine spending more than the 2 days there. I guess the only real attractions were golf and gambling so if you don't do either there isn't much to do. The hotel tower itself was actually really nice and there were definitely some good restaurants, but unless I'm super bored I probably won't go back too often.

We then drove up to Kingston to visit Steve and his wife Nat who I hadn't seen in a while. Nat was at her baby shower for most of the time we were there but it was good to see them and apparently 5 days after we left they had their baby and named her Emily, congrats!

After that we drove up to Molly's cottage which seems to be even more isolated than my parents cottage, and despite coming last place in a poker game where the majority of people had a hand rankings chart in front of them it was pretty fun.

After that, we headed to Barrie to do this "tree top trekking" thing which is sort of similar to rock-climbing except that its less physically demanding. Everyone gets a harness which is similar to in rock climbing and 2 caribiners as well as a pulley. The trees all have a metal platform with various wires on it and each tree is connected by a "game" usually involving your carabiner's being attached to 1 or 2 wires around shoulder height and you permforming some sort of activity to get across(could be walking along a rope bridge, walking over barrels, climbing through barrels etc etc) before attaching to the next tree and continuing on. The pulley is used for the ziplines where you basically just put the pulley over a wire, sit back and zoom to the next tree.

Overall this was a really fun way to spend an afternoon, and although I would have liked it to be more demanding(pretty much every course was accessable for people trying it for the first time... I would have liked it more if it were like rock climbing in that no one can succeed at everyone on their first time), after that I finally went back to Waterloo for a few days.

My last few days of Summer in Waterloo were also pretty fun but it started to get quite cool. Fortunately it wasn't long before I was going to Cannes/Barcelona. My friend Tuhin won a package to EPT Dublin a while ago but has been busy since then so he has kept deferring the package. He was available to play Barcelona so he decided he'd use the package for that. I told him the Partouche Poker Tour event in Cannes is the best tourney of the year and agreed to buy him in for 1/2 his action + 1/2 his action in Barcelona, these are his first live tournaments but I still can't imagine anyone having less than like a 200 ROI in the Partouche event... more on that later.

We got to the airport fairly early and had time to get dinner. We went to just a random cheap diner type place and sort of lost track of time before realizing our flight had already started boarding and was taking off in like 20-25 minutes. We left quickly(had been at the diner maybe 90 minutes) and got to the gate just before they were roping it off. We saw a few customs agents waiting behind the gate so we figured it would take a while to board since I had more than 10k on me.

Right after she checked out passports Tuhin said to me "maybe I'm crazy, but did we pay for dinner?" he was not crazy and we unintentionally dined-and-dashed without paying for our chicken tenders. We were kind of thinking someone from the restaurant might come after us at this point(I've never d&d'ed before so I have no idea what standard protocol is) and were stopped by the customs guys. I told them that I had more than 10k euros and while counting it out/filling out the form in the back of my head I was just praying that the lady from the diner wouldn't come by telling them I stole my dinner since I'd look like the cheapest person in the world when carrying over 30k and not paying for my $12 meal(next time I'm at the airport I'll try to pay for that meal, hopefully it didn't come out of the waitress's salary). Anyways, while the "bad cop" was questioning me, the "good cop" was asking Tuhin about whether we are playing an EPT event, saying he really likes watching the pros play online etc. After I got done with the other cop, the "good cop" asked for my online name and apparently he watches me play all the time. Thought that was pretty random/made me look like a baller.

Anyways, we got to Cannes, realized I brought too many pants and nowhere near enough shorts, and made our way to the hotel that FunkiMunki recommended as the closest one to the casino. He was wrong and on our map we are about as far as possible from the casino, but most people are paying 3-6x what we are so it likely worked out for the best. We registered for the event, and checked out who was playing and wholy fuck it was crazy!

There were like 5 or so name pros(Matusow, Seidel, Tilly, Laak, Esfandiari, maybe a few more I've forgotten) and then NO ONE else. I mean like not even any "oh I've never played with him but I've seen him around" type guys and this is a 8.5k euro buyin with 260 runners yesterday and more today. Its ridiculous. Everyone is a grey-haired frenchman. Day 1b looks like it will be tougher, I've seen maybe 8 online guys around as well as a decent number of other people who play some EPT events and stuff, but I think it should still be the best tournament of the year(likely better than WSOP ME), since it has a very similar structure and well... no one is here.

Alright, thats it for now, play starts in just over 2 hours so hopefully I can hit some sets and other people will hit some pairs.

So the last couple weeks were fairly busy for me. I had the last couple weeks of running before my marathon, my marathon, the FTOPS and I went up to my cottage. The low point of the last few weeks was when I went out for my longest run to date (32km) I started to get light headed after about 20km and had to only do 2 of my 3 loops. This was the "most important" run before the marathon and it really shattered my confidence. I kind of see-sawed between whether I should even do the marathon, what my goal time should be etc etc. I more or less decided that I'd run it if the whether looked reasonable and if it was a scorching day probably either pass, or just run 1/2 or something.

I also went up to my cottage for a couple days and the whether was miserable so I probably did 1 or 2 less short runs than I optimally should have. The last couple weeks I've also had some decent sweats in online tournies for the FTOPS. On the 9th, I had one of my most mediocre Sundays in a while, and on the 11th I had possibly my most promising tourney session ever(not just in the sense of winning tons of money, but just in running good across the big and small tournies). I played 27 tournies and cashed 9 with 2 or 3 bubbles and won a 100 FO, got 3rd in a 50 FO, 11th in a 100 FO, 12th in the triple shootout FTOPS, and 9th in a pretty big 109r. It was pretty disappointing to be HU in round 2 of the TSO with the chiplead and be like 2nd/11 and then finish the day like this. It was obviously a pretty successful day anyways, but it was pretty crazy how many tournaments were going well that day.

I played 2 other days of FTOPS, the Wednesday night with the 300r and despite getting great stacks in the 300r and the 1k on Cereus things came crashing down to be a pretty lame day, I also played this Saturday(stopped regging pretty early since I had to wake up at 7am for the marathon and wanted to sleep at like 930 or something). Sure enough I ended up getting deep in the 1 time consuming tourney of the day and made day 2 of the 2500 FTOPS. It was a pretty good day for the most part before running KK into AA on the bubble and managing to squeak into the money before running up a stack to about 1/2 of average, and putting me in 56th/66. I didn't get to bed until a little after midnight but felt really good when I woke up in the morning.

I drank some water, had a power bar, checked the weather(was supposed to be warm but not ridiciulous) but bandages on my nipples so they didn't bleed this time and I was ready to go. I went to pick up Will and we were both pretty excited for the run. He had run our 32k run in 2:59 and was going for about 4:00, I was more or less just going to finish after my fail at the 32k run but was hoping for about 4:30.

The race started just after 7:30am and the temperature was about 16(61f) and there would be water stations at every 3rd kilometer. There were just over 40 runners, most of whom had run 120k in the last week, and soon enough the race had started. One difficult part about this run was that its very tempting to set your pace based on the pace of the person in front of you(ie. keep a similar distance between you). In most races you can get into a group of people running a similar pace and go by that, but here if one person is speeding up or slowing down, its tough to not mimic them. We started out the race fairly quick and it was pretty clear Will would end up running quicker than me so after about 15 minutes I told him to feel free to run ahead. I kept a really consistent(but fairly quick pace) for a while. The first 3k took 15:34, next 3k took 16:45, then 16:59, then 16:29, 16:49, 16:47, 16:24, and I was 1/2 way in 1:56:01, the course was pretty fairly up and down and had a lot of uphills for a couple kilometers(about 15.5km to 17.5k) and . I have no idea whether I should have gone slower in hindsight but I had felt no cramps(usually I always feel a bit of a cramp after ~12k or so), no soreness and although it was heating up quite a bit(was up to close to 30) I had drank plenty of water and I was feeling good enough that I felt like I would finish this in 4:05 easily, possibly 4:00 if things kept going so well. The next 3k took 16:47, then 25k felt great, 26k and I was feeling spectacular and beginning to realize I'm going to finish this thing and probably in a pretty respectable time.

By the time I was done 27km I was tempted to stop the race. I have no idea what happened, err I know what happened, but I can't believe it was so suddenly. The day was now about 33 and felt like 38 which is about the hottest temperature we've had all summer and handsdown the fastest I had run in. Going 3km without water in this environment was really tough and my body was beginning to feel super drained. I am normally hot in temperatures most people find normal, and in hot temperatures I really don't do well. I finished KM's 24-27 in 17:01 but was pretty sure the fast pace was over. For the next few km I started run/walking(which pretty much everyone else around my pace was doing as well) where I'd walk 2-3 minutes, jog the rest of the kilometer(which I later switched to walking uphills and jogging the flat/downhill sections to save energy) and I was really not excited about having to do this for 15km. The first couple kilometers of this went quite well, I felt as if I was really not wasting much energy and could definitely finish in a respectable time still. The next 3km took 20:12, then there were no energy gels at the 30km station(every station had Water, Gatorade, Sponges, and Energy packets which I intended to take at kilometers 6,12,18,24,30,36). Missing one of these would not be too detrimental since in my training I'd only have them about every 8-9km and here I was taking them every 6.

The next 3km felt pretty similar, and took 21:14, and again the station had no energy gels. I was pretty unexcited at the thought of running the rest of the race without these. At this point when going through a water station instead of getting my usual cup or two of water, I was getting a bottle of water, cup of gatorade and a sponge at every station. The next 3km were a similar pace of 21:20 and left me thinking I'd finish the race in just under 4:15 assuming things didn't get any better or worse. I got a gel here and prepared myself for the few kilometers of uphill that I faced. My plan of walking the uphills really would result in these being slow kilometers since they were almost all uphill with the last couple kilometers being downhills or flat. I walked probably 1.5-2km of the next 3km(for the previous 9km I had probably walked about the same distance) and took 25:28, but was feeling very refreshed and ready to run the majority of the last 3km. I had run about 1/2 a kilometer, was feeling great before I stepped and felt the worst charlie horse of my life in my right leg. The next step the same thing. I then realized I was not going to be smiling as I crossed the finish line. I couldn't run at all and even walking was pretty painful, so I had to walk the last 3km. It was pretty disappointing to have been out there trying my best for 4 hours in the hottest temperature I've run in and then have this affect my run. I ended up taking just under 30 minutes of nearly constant cursing for the last 3.2km and then I was done in 4:27:27. Shortly after finishing I started to feel pretty happy and ignore the pain in my legs and I have no idea what my future running goals will be.

I think if I run a marathon again I'd choose it in the early spring or late fall so that I could put up a more reasonable time. I'd also want to run one of the bigger marathons where you have people everywhere and spectator support(the 1/2 marathon I ran in Duluth had such a ridiculously nice/supportive environment) as well as more water stations. At one point during the marathon Will(who finished in 3:48) went an hour without seeing another runner, and I never could see more than 1-2 people ahead of me. I think I'll probably do more middle distance running and maybe train to run a fastish 5-10k this fall and a quick 1/2 marathon in the spring or something like that. 4.5 hours was a long time to be running and I didn't really put much thought into the music I put on my ipod which proved frustrating.

Alright, enough complaining, it was actually a pretty good result and I have no reason to be ashamed(if my first half took 2:15 and 2nd took 2:12, I would be so happy right now), but I had less than 2 hours to get home, get lunch, get non-disgusting and get 1st place in the 2500 FTOPS to make the day truly awesome. The day started good with me winning the blinds a few times, caling a raise with 77 and having a 3 way pot and stacking AJ after the AJ3 flop was checked around and I turned a 7 to get above average. I then kept cardracking and winning small pots and then eliminated Brandon Adams and at first break I had turned 33k into 151k and was 11/47.

Shorly after break I 3barreled californication- who just called bvb pre with AT, called the K85hh board, A turn and then tank called my 1/3 pot bet on the K river. No idea whether he was legitimately considering folding, but people seem to really believe my small river bets.

A few hands later, I open 88, he calls in position, a loose shortstack shoves 18 or 20BB from the SB, I reshove 50BB with 88, californication- calls AKs, shorty has AQ and I lose a big flip to be out like 40th.

Since then not much has happened, I've been taking it pretty easy in terms of physical activity since I don't really want to injure myself or anything. I'm going to Turning Stone this weekend, then visiting Stevejpa in Kingston then going to my girlfriends cottage, then going to Cannes/Barcelona to get my fall poker started, so I doubt I'll be playing much online but I'll try to keep my blog updated.

Hey. still no pictures of the car but I'm really stupid for not getting one quite some time ago. Today I tried starting to make videos multiple times but I was such a poor closer it didn't amount to anything. I got 12th in the Party Million, 12th in the UB 200k, and 38th in the Mulligan. I'm pretty happy with how not unhappy I am about Party. This was the biggest online tournament I've gotten super deep in within the last 18 months or so and after busting it I was more or less able to continue the Sunday as if not much had happened. I had over final table average with just under 30 left, and began recording video, but nothing really went well. Later in the day I did the same with UB, I was like 4th/16 or so and before I knew it I was out of that one too and almost no interesting hands took place. I think sometime I might just play a session, keep it to ~6 tables or so and record myself 4 tabling for the whole session and just tell myself beforehand I won't scrap the videos beforehand to make sure that the videos that go up on the site are "random" rather than just tournaments where I ran good.

Its weird when making videos, no one wants to see an MTT video where you didn't do well, but no one wants to see a video where you were getting lucky. Theres no way to please everyone but this seems like about as good of a compromise as I can come up with.

Thats all I have to right about for now